According to the state of the art, methods for transmitting data packets implement error detection mechanisms making it possible to eliminate the erroneous packets.
According to the IEEE802.16 wireless communication standard, MAC frames consisting of physical frames (or “bursts”) comprise PDUs (standing for “Packet Data Units”). Each PDU comprises a header, data and a CRC (standing for “Cyclic Redundancy Check”). The CRC makes it possible to check whether the packet is in error. The header is itself protected by an HCS (standing for “Header Check Sum”) making it possible to disregard an erroneous header. The length of the PDUs is variable and is indicated in the header. Also, according to a first known implementation, when the HCS of a PDU is erroneous, the current PDU and the PDUs following are not taken into account. In order to alleviate this drawback, the IEEE802.16 standard envisages an optional mechanism for retrieving the start of the following PDUs, this mechanism being called “Transmission Convergence Sublayer”. According to this mechanism, the physical frame is divided into several data segments (for example OFDM symbols) protected by a Reed-Solomon code. The Reed-Solomon decoder can indicate to the DLC (standing for “Data Link Control”) layer that the current segment is good. A specific byte is inserted at the start of each segment to indicate the start of the next PDU commencing in the segment considered. Thus, by decoding each segment and by reading this specific byte, it is possible to identify the following PDU and therefore to synchronize reception again after a bad HCS. This technique nevertheless presents the drawback of being relatively complex (processing of a signal arising from a Reed-Solomon decoder) and consumes bandwidth.